Transportation System Risk Simulation and Management under Multi-Hazard Situations A Case Study in Amherst, NY

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Abstract

This thesis presents the result of case study in Amherst, NY that extensively examines the effects of multiple hazards (e.g. traffic incidents and inclement weather) on the performance of the transportation network. Using the mesoscopic Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) model, DynusT, several multiple-hazard incident scenarios were simulated under normal condition as well as inclement weather and incident conditions. Several attributes were measured and analyzed in order to assess the impacts of the incidents and inclement weather on performance, including average travel time, travel time distribution and O-D travel times. In addition, two ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) strategies were tested for selected scenario for their effectiveness in mitigating the effects linked with the incidents. Two approaches were adopted to measure the effectiveness of these approaches. The results obtained from the scenarios studied suggest that advanced information provision has the potential to mitigate some of the negative impacts resulted from emergency and hazard scenarios. For certain scenarios, the user class that is provided with advance information clearly benefited over non-responsive users. This is mainly reflected by the substantial reduction of average travel time for the responsive user class and also by the reduction of average travel time for all the impacted vehicles.